Deirdre Mayer Dougherty

Meet Professor Dougherty

Years at Knox: 2018 to present

I am an interdisciplinary scholar of education. I use historical and ethnographic methods to study educational inequality in the United States and abroad. My first two book projects explore school desegregation in Maryland and New Jersey from historical and ethnographic perspectives. Since coming to Knox, I’ve become interested in local history and in place-based learning. I’ve had the opportunity to work with students, collaboratively researching a number of different topics ranging from the history of the founders of Knox to the history of Mexican American education in the midwest. Before earning my PhD, I taught 7th grade language arts and Adult Basic Education in Maryland.  

Education

Ph.D., Education (Theory, Organization, and Policy), 2018, Rutgers University—New Brunswick
M.A., Latin American Studies/Anthropology, 2008, Georgetown University
B.A., Latin American Studies, 2005, Smith College 

Selected Professional Accomplishments

Honors/Grants

2022, Philip Green Wright-Lombard College Prize for Excellence in Teaching

2021, State Historical Society of Iowa Research Grant, “Migrant Education and the Social Construction of Mexican-American Learners in Iowa,” $1000.

2020, Knox College Exceptional Achievement Award      

2016, Lord Baltimore Research Fellow, Maryland Center for Research and Culture, $1000.           

Books

Race and Place: School Desegregation in Prince George's County, Maryland. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2025. 

Trachtenburg, Paul, Allison Roda, Ryan Coughlan, and Deirdre Dougherty. Making School Integration Work: Lessons from Morris. New York: Teachers College Press, 2020.

Publications

“Mapping the Contours of Black Juvenile Delinquency: The Journal of Negro Education, 1945- 1975.” Journal of Urban History, 49:5 (2023), 995-1014.

 “‘Outside of the Environment of Anglo Schools’: Ethnic Mexican and Migrant Children and a New Age of Linguistic Rights in Iowa, 1950-1975.” Annals of Iowa, 82: 1 (2023): 3–40. 

“Urban Redevelopment, School Closure, and the Abstract Space of Black Schooling in Prince George’s County, Maryland, 1968-1972.” Journal of Urban History, 46: 5 (2020): 1117–41.

Paul Trachtenberg, Ryan Coughlan, Allison Roda and Deirdre Dougherty. The Fertile Ground of School Integration: A Counter-Story to Segregated and Unequal Education, (Book under contract at Teacher’s College Press).

Deirdre Dougherty. “Urban Redevelopment, School Closure, and the Abstract Space of Black Schooling in Prince George’s County, Maryland, 1968” (2019) Journal of Urban History.

Deirdre Dougherty and Sean Leavey. “Feeling Busing: The Washington Post, Emotion, and Desegregation in Suburban Maryland, 1968-1973,” (2019) Media History.

Deirdre Dougherty and Beth Rubin “Learning the Colonial Past in a Colonial Present: Students and Teachers Confront the Spanish Conquest in Post-Conflict Guatemala.” Educational Studies 52(3), 1–21.

Deirdre Dougherty. "From Classrooms to the Streets: Trump, DeVos, and Denial of Racism." Mid-Atlantic Education Review (2017), 5(1).

Presentations

With Walter Stern, Menika Dirkson, Max Felker-Kantor, Noah Remnick, Judith Kafka, and Matthew Kautz. Roundtable on Education and the Carceral State, Urban History Association Annual Meeting, 2023.

“Caring for the College: The Knox Faculty Wives, Reproductive Labor, and In/visibility, 1920-1980.” History of Education Annual Meeting, 2023

“‘This Child Is Rated X’: Juvenile Delinquents in Print and Film, 1945-1975.” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, 2022.

 “From Margin to Center: Some Reflections from the Undergraduate Classroom.” History of Education Society Annual Meeting, 2021.

“Schools as Dangerous Spaces: Desegregation and Discipline in Sub/Urban Maryland, 1973-2012.” Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, 2021. 

“Theorizing Neighborhood: Race, Community, and Neighborhood Schools in Prince George’s County, 1969-1973,” Washington D.C. Historical Society Annual Conference, 2019.

Deirdre Dougherty “The Moral Geography of Busing: Prince George’s County, Maryland 1969 1973 Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada, April 2019

Deirdre Dougherty “Pleasant Living Is an Everyday Fact of Life: School Desegregation in Suburban Maryland, 1950-1960 Paper presented at the History of Education Society Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 2018

Deirdre Dougherty. “A Genealogy of Danger: Some “Truths” about Desegregation in Suburban Maryland, 1967-2015” Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas, April 2017

Public Scholarship

“School Segregation in the Land of Lincoln” TEDx Talk, Knox College 2024. 

“School Segregation in the Land of Lincoln – The Abolition for All Time Digital Humanities Lab.” May 2023. 

“Nicer in Newtown: The Stories White Folks Tell about Place.” Why Is Newtown So White? (blog), April 2021.